Luce & Millett at 1800 Pine Street, Rittenhouse area, Philadelphia

Luce & Millett, Priscilla Luce and Caroline Millett's preservation development firm, has a new project at 1800 Pine St.  Luce & Millett is creating glamorous personal environments within a historic mansion at 1800 Pine in the Rittenhouse area of Philadelphia.  The house, built in 1852, will contain three multi-level condominiums, each with its own private entrance.

FLOOR PLANS OF THE CONDOMINIUMS AT 1800 PINE

Millett Design ©

#1 CONDOMINIUM, WITH HISTORIC ENTRY ON PINE STREET

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Millett Design ©

#2 CONDOMINIUM, WITH GATED TERRACE ENTRY ON 18TH STREET

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Millett Design ©

#3 CONDOMINIUM, WITH GRAND VICTORIAN ENTRY ON 18TH STREET

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"BEFORE" PHOTOGRAPHS OF LUCE & MILLETT PROJECT

Michael Ahearn photographs

1800 Pine "Before"

Michael Ahearn photographs

1800 Pine "Before"

Michael Ahearn photographs

1800 Pine "Before"

Michael Ahearn photographs

1800 Pine "Before"

For more information about these amazing condominiums, now under construction, go to

  www.1800Pine.com

or email info@1800Pine.com

Using Your Home to Tell Your Own Story

by Caroline Millett  ©2001

Throughout the country, a growing number of Americans are using their homes to tell their own personal stories.  Perhaps as a reaction the conformity of cookie-cutter housing, they have begun to celebrate their own unique histories, fascinations and dreams.  I call this approach to interior design the Narrative Style.  Ideally, each statement in the Narrative Style is a one-of-a-kind, custom-made solution to a particular individual requirement.  A most spectacular example of the story-telling method is that of Napoleon’s Empire Style (1804-1820).  Ever a master of self-promotion, Bonaparte commissioned the most accomplished artists, architects, and artisans of the day to create singular furnishings reflecting the glory of his conquests in Egypt and Italy.  He and Empress Josephine filled their palaces with powerful architectonic pieces replete with ancient military symbolism – eagles reigning over beds and lions’ feet supporting chairs.  (Empire Style adaptations remain remarkably popular today.  The American version is known as Federal, while the English version is known as Regency.) 

Narrative Style is most easily understood as the opposite of packaged style.  It provides an alternative to frozen period rooms, strict Minimalism, and rigid International Modernism, with its “machines for living.”  At the same time, however, this is not to imply that you either eliminate period arrangements or that you ignore current trends.  Far from it.  Cultural heritage and immediate environment necessarily influence all interior design work.  What I am suggesting is that you begin a project by focusing on yourself instead of a formula, old or new.  Forget model rooms by this designer or that.  Ignore standardized floor plans, no matter how seductive.  Trash “guaranteed” colors schemes.  Tell your own tale, and you will be well on your way to making a personal statement of style. 

The idea of expressing personal preferences has become a primary goial in interior design, along with the more traditional foals of beauty, comfort, and efficiency.  This notion “personal style” has, in fact, entered the mass consciousness.  Filmmakers love to compose rooms that reveal a character’s personality.  For instance, in the movie The Specialist, Sharon Stone plays a gone-wrong girl who seduces a Mafia lord as a means to revenge the murder of her parents.  The audience, however, knows that she is still a “good girl” at heart because she returns to her childhood persona in a modest apartment filled with family photos, immaculate linens, and charming keepsakes.  When the heroine is forced to leave her home to live her lover’s skillfully decorated seaside mansion with sparkling white marble floors and jagged black sculptures, she takes one look and says, “Next time you order a hit you ought to consider taking out your decorator.”

Character and Panache

 The goal is to design personal environments that are not only comfortable and efficient, but that also display a certain character and panache.  And although every project is different, there are certain steps to follow.  First, evaluate the general ambiance of your world.  Think about the landscape, the architecture, your community in general.  Second, you must always take into account interior architectural and other functional considerations.  The third step is a bit more fun.  It’s a treasure hunt.  You can learn a great deal about yourself by identifying the things that are most precious to you in your home.  Your treasures may reflect a concern for family, status, past accomplishments, aesthetics, and/or memories.  Using myself as an example, I count among my prized possessions a book printed by Henry Shirley Millett, the first published west of the Mississippi, a sculpture by Noguchi, given to me by the architect Louis Kahn, and collection of ceramic pots made by a man I loved.

You, yourself, may find that your view of the waves crashing against the rocks gives you more pleasure than any object in your home, but whatever the case, identifying the things that you treasure will take you well on your way to developing a personal design concept. 

In design parlance, a “concept” is the central theem that integrates the artistic whole.  That “pulled together look” that is so much sought after is a result of conceptualization.  A case in point, a client of mine, a gracious widow, after careful self-examination, realized that gardening and cooking for friends were the central interests in her life once her children had grown up.  She therefore transformed her four bedroom ranch house into a two bedroom “garden villa” enlarged by the creation of several outdoor rooms, one for poolside cooking, another for potting plants, and best of all, a secluded courtyard for courting!  The former bedrooms were connected to an expanded kitchen/dining area, brightened with new French doors and skylights, as well as graced by seasonal flowers and herbs.

The Unavoidable Step

Editing!  Almost everyone needs to eliminate clutter – and anything that’s dirty, ugly, or just plain boring.  This process is challenging, but it’s essential for anyone who wishes to refine and elevate his or her style.  The finest residential design is invariably a product of evolution.  Like any endeavor, it helps to have at least a basic understanding of the principles, and this is where some professional guidance may really be very helpful.  A skillful interior designer can stimulate your imagination, eliciting thoughts and ideas you never knew you could have.  Home design is a special kind of artistic expression, one that has a powerful impact on the quality of our daily lives.  Be patient with yourself, and take time to create what gives you the greatest pleasure.          

Today's Historic Interiors and Schiffer Books

Schiffer Books, the press that is publishing my book "Today's Historic Interiors," co-authored with E. Ashley Rooney, has listed the book on their website!


Schiffer Books - "Today's Historic Interiors"

Check out their section on Architecture and Landscape Design - this is a delightful publishing company with lots to offer.

And follow this link to some of the Schiffer publications of my co-author, E. Ashley Rooney.

Today's Historic Interiors - book coming in the fall!

My book, "Today's Historic Interiors," co-authored with E. Ashley Rooney, is being published by Schiffer Press in October!

This book will deal with historic preservation and home design, two of my greatest passions.  You can pre-order it here!
Amazon.com - Today's Historic Interiors, by E. Ashley Rooney and Caroline Millett

Ralph Lauren at Monticello

Ralph Lauren remakes Thomas Jefferson- Part I

CAROLINE DUNLOP MILLETT
(Originally published in the Broad Street Review, July 27, 2010)


Prior to his recent makeover of Thomas Jefferson’s country house, Monticello, much applauded in Elle Décor’s July/August issue, Ralph Lauren made no claim to fame as a restorer of historic sites. But now his team has turned Jefferson’s Wedgwood-blue dining room into a shocking chrome yellow “total environment.”
That’s the phrase Lauren’s publicists have applied to each of the faux upper-class designer’s previous Lauren Collections– a line of furnishings that has included “New England,” “Thoroughbred” and “Jamaica,” among others.
As Witold Rybczynski observed so astutely in Home (Penguin Books, 1986), Lauren has made his mark not by designing real interiors but by peddling romanticized ideas of upper-crust lifestyles— backdrops designed to promote the sale of fabrics, table wares, and bedclothes. In the past, Lauren’s métier has been contemporary imagery that invokes Old World charm. But now his company, Polo Ralph Lauren, has made a surprising move into early 19th-Century Virginia, giving “a generous donation” (as Elle Décor put it) for the restoration of Jefferson’s dining room.
Jefferson’s personal vision
It’s important to note that the third president of the U.S. and author of the Declaration of Independence was also a homebody who spent more than 40 years designing, building and refining Monticello, inside and out. There Jefferson created a totally personal environment of unsurpassed beauty. So Lauren’s appearance at Jefferson’s country home is cause for comment and speculation. Is Lauren gathering ideas for a “Monticello Collection”? Or is this dining room makeover Lauren’s first step toward remaking Monticello in Ralph Lauren’s image?
Last fall, Lauren announced the relocation of his distribution center to West Virginia. Then, according to Lauren’s RL Magazine, Lauren set his sights on Jefferson’s work at both the University of Virginia and Monticello: “When it comes to fashion, Charlottesville draws on its heritage – it’s one of the last bastions of truly classic American dress…”
Whatever Lauren’s intentions, the work completed in Thomas Jefferson’s dining room cannot be called a restoration, since the Lauren team isn’t just preserving and refreshing original furnishings. The newcomer has substituted his own reproductions, and even some totally contemporary objects.
Before and after
In Elle Décor, you can see the before-and-after: Jefferson’s original table has been covered to the floor by Ralph Lauren’s black-and-white-striped tablecloth, “made truly modern and appealing with a mix of contemporary china and other tableware” (according to Elle Décor editor Mitchell Owen).
What’s more, Polo provided a reproduction sideboard and a spotty taupe “interpretation” of Jefferson’s Abbeville carpet. And Jefferson’s personal art collection has just been arranged in characteristic Ralph Lauren style: Thick black modernist frames are bunched together. Paintings and prints “now pop into view…crisp against the bold yellow.”
Replaced by wallpaper
Chrome yellow is the historical hook on which this conversion hangs. After living with plaster-white walls for more than 30 years, in 1815 Jefferson did in fact paint his dining room walls chrome yellow, a new pigment discovered by Louis Nicolas Vauquelin in France. What the Elle Décor article fails to mention is that the pigment was made of crocoite (lead chromate), a substance that oxidizes and darkens on exposure to air over time. Not surprisingly, the yellow was replaced by wallpaper (as were a number of other rooms in Monticello). Either at the end of the 19th Century or in the early 20th Century, depending on which sources you believe, the dining room was painted blue.
Given all these factors, and the popularity of the Wedgwood blue version that so many associate with the room, in truth it’s a challenge to say which hue is most appropriate for a restoration. But one thing is certain: The color palette in a national historic monument shouldn’t be selected on the grounds of contemporary chicatude. Fashion should never dictate a real restoration– and “fashion” is what Ralph Lauren sells.
I certainly agree with the Monticello Foundation’s stated mission: to protect historic resources in order to provide education and inspiration for our society’s future. Unfortunately, Ralph Lauren’s much-publicized modernization of America’s most cherished private residence sends an entirely different message: Money can buy anything.♦

Ralph Lauren remakes Thomas Jefferson- Part II, 

Fashion vs. history

CAROLINE DUNLOP MILLETT
(Originally published in the Broad Street Review, August 7, 2010)
 
My recent BSR article about Ralph Lauren’s makeover of Thomas Jefferson’s dining room at Monticello has provoked questions and challenges from readers, such as: Who authorized this project? How much did Lauren contribute, financially or artistically? Were the changes really as bad as I suggested? So I’ve done further research.
Susan R. Stein, Monticello’s vice president and curator, told me she takes full responsibility for what she calls the “reinterpretation” of the dining room. She emphatically denied that Ralph Lauren had anything to do with the project’s design, and further indicated that crediting the firm for participating in the project must have been a mistake on the part of Elle Décor magazine’s website and slideshow (and whatever other publications may have credited Lauren).
On the other hand, she acknowledged that a number of the furnishings featured at Monticello are in fact new. This means, of course, that the makeover is not a restoration, as the Elle Décor article claimed, since only originals or antiques of the period could qualify for a genuine restoration of Thomas Jefferson’s home.
On the subject of Ralph Lauren Home’s contribution of table linens covering the entire dining room table to the floor, along with additional gray-and-white linens, carafe, and glasses, Stein justifies these contributions (and the reproduction furniture), since they are “fresh and new and current…and fashionable.” When I asked her what motivated her to replace the old with the new, she replied that she wants to provide revolutionary perspectives in order to draw new visitors and additional funding to Monticello. Without Ralph Lauren’s substantial grant, she added, the dining room project could not have taken place.
When I called Polo Ralph Lauren, I was referred to Alexandra Ginnel, who is in charge of press relations. She said that Ralph Lauren paid for the entire Monticello project but wasn’t involved in the design process, which she says was the work of Charlotte Moss, a Virginia-born interior designer who creates and sells china, and whom Elle Décor credits with the new table settings at Monticello. Ginnel said that Moss “partook to bring relevance to an American historical site that many may not relate to in a modern way. Her use of present consumer products brought the historical aspect of it full circle… She chose modern furnishings to reinterpret the room in a modern way. She chose almost all the furnishings in the room.”
I read Ginnel the Charlottesville (va.) Area Daily piece entitled, “Polo Does Monticello,” specifically these excerpts: “Consider a visit to… the dining room recently renovated by Ralph Lauren Home. … Working in partnership with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Ralph Lauren sponsored the dining room restoration, including a reproduction of a sideboard similar to one Jefferson bought in 1790, a French marble console table, and an interpretation of the Abbeville carpet Jefferson purchased in France in the 1780s.” Ginnel admitted that she had sent information about the Monticello project to Area Daily.
Regardless of who actually designed what, this much seems patently clear: One of our nation’s most treasured historic sites has been hugely commercialized.
Monticello is not just a beloved monument; it’s also a beautiful example of the personal environment of a great man. To repeat my original point: It seems a terrible shame to introduce brand-new features and commercial products to a historic landmark in order to create a little excitement.

The Home as Art: Practical Advice

My home, my museum, or:
How to handle ‘a woman’s third crisis’

CAROLINE DUNLOP MILLETT
(Originally published in the Broad Street Review, November 19, 2009)


  In “On buying art in Philadelphia,” Victoria Skelly chastised Philadelphia Magazine for giving bad advice on how to decorate your home with art. I would chastise her review for the same reason.
Although Skelly presents some good arguments against copycat approaches to residential design, in conclusion she fails to provide any helpful guidance. Her single concrete example of fine design is her own home, where she started her project with artworks inherited from her artist father. How does this advice help the reader whose relatives are not accomplished artists?
After warning us away from professional support, Skelly insists you should discover your identity entirely on your own, and assures BSR readers that the rest of home design “should follow quite naturally. It should organically emerge.”
Professional designers and consultants like me know that the great majority of homeowners are seriously challenged at expressing their own creative style. That’s why they hire us. But why can’t they just buy art objects and furnishings (as Skelly suggests) and make the same kind of personal statement that they achieve when they buy a party dress or necktie?

Too many conflicting goals
The reason is: because the goals of residential design are complex and often conflicting. Physical and psychological comfort, everyday efficiency, aesthetics, and personal style don’t just naturally go together. Trying to meet all these goals at the same time, in a three-dimensional space that constantly changes – that’s a very tall order.
Cost is big factor as well. When you enter the realm of aesthetics, it’s easy to make major financial mistakes— like, say, buying “indispensable” gadgetry that makes your home office ugly, or discovering that your new super-sofa won’t fit through your front door.
Painted ladies in girdles
Perhaps the most costly mistake involves trying to decorate spaces that are architecturally flawed to begin with. Such rooms, improperly designed, can look like over-painted fat ladies squeezed into too-tight girdles.
Psychological factors can be just as disastrous. As my friend Marciarose Shestack puts it: “A woman faces three major crises in her life: when she marries, when she has children, and when she decorates.” Since the how-to magazines have declared home decorating “simple,” many homeowners feel compelled perform overnight miracles. But few Americans possess the experience and education necessary to wade through the confusing array of design products and information.
Building confidence
But enough negativity! Residential design is one of the few opportunities American adults have to express themselves with genuine creative freedom. The design process really can be pleasurable— even exciting— if you begin on a small scale, gradually develop basic design skills and confidence before you go shopping, and seek truly expert advice when it’s necessary.
It’s a matter of finding out who you are at home, learning to recognize the treasures you already possess, developing a realistic budget, creating coherent room arrangements and making use of light and color. Take these small steps and you’ll enjoy the opportunity to live in your own work of art.
If you’re a design beginner, I advise you to start with the smallest of projects— a powder room, say, or office alcove. Or you might try a strictly theoretical project. Meanwhile, you can take a class in interior design.
Three strategies
But how should the neophyte handle the most demanding component: art acquisition? I urge you to consider one of these three options: (1) Continue working until you’re sure you have the talent and competence to do all your own home design work; or (2) finish most of the steps yourself, and work interactively with a professional in any areas that require aesthetic know-how; or (3) hire an expert to make artistic judgments based on your special sense of style.
When the time comes to actually buy fine arts or crafts, Philadelphians enjoy a great advantage. We have superb art schools, most notably the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Tyler, Moore and the University of the Arts. We have a plethora of art galleries, studios and museums. Best news of all, it’s a buyer’s market: Since stock prices crashed in October 2008, many highly trained young artists are offering high quality work in the range of $200 to $1,500.
If you’re serious about acquiring contemporary work, I suggest you start attending First Fridays in Old City, where you can meet dozens of artists and view their work within a few hours. Given this wealth of options, Philadelphia homeowners have ample opportunity to turn their homes into their own artistic meccas while enjoying the process at the same time.

Down with minimalist design!

Down with purity, up with character:
Radical (but sensible) home design tips

CAROLINE DUNLOP MILLETT  
(Originally published in the Broad Street Review, May 30, 2009)

Fifth in a series of articles on home design
 
Reading endless shelter magazines, as I must do, I am bored to bejesus with contemporary minimalist homes. These rooms are starved for personality. With all those regulation black/ gray/white spaces dominated by formulaic furniture and the flat screen TV, surrounded by oodles of glass, the best imagery in these minimalist rooms is usually the view out the window. For more than 30 years the anorexic room has reigned as the icon of high life style.
During this same period, many art gallery environments succumbed to a similar “white cube style,” a purist box with shining concrete floors, “impeding rather than enhancing the rhythms of art,” as Jerry Saltz put it earlier this year in New York magazine.
Saltz reached the same conclusion as I have: It’s time to activate the sterile environment with individual creativity. Down with obsessive purity and up with color, chaos and character!
But how, exactly, can the enlightened homeowner face such a challenge?
1) By gaining the confidence to express his or her own personal style instead of following fashion’s dictates; and
2) By learning basic aesthetic principles. Since I have already written several columns (beginning here) about developing personal style, I’ll focus in this article on the how-to’s of making your home beautiful. Learning three aesthetic principles– symmetry, continuity and focus– is a good way to start.
• Symmetry means balance, and most people’s eyes associate beauty with balance. In strictly symmetrical interiors, a theoretical axis divides the space down the middle with identical furnishings on both sides of that axis. Although such rooms are usually very formal, they need not be the least old-fashioned. Take a look at Greg Lynn’s corian breakfast nook.
Lynn is an avant-garde architect best known for his “blob” works, but he has also designed a personal environment almost as symmetrically balanced as a Greek temple. Please note that Lynn’s room is not perfectly symmetrical (the objects above the sofa don’t match). Nowadays, classically acclaimed “perfect symmetry” has pretty much fallen by the wayside, since it seems so cold and/or artificial. Modern eyes feel more comfortable with asymmetrically balanced interiors, such as Lynn’s, where both sides of a space have equal visual weight, without being identical. Happily, more relaxed rooms give the homeowner a certain allowance for artful messiness.
These more comfortable, contemporary arrangements lend themselves to aggressively individualized lifestyles, where form tends to follow function freely. For those who celebrate their treasures in the increasingly popular Eclectic Style, asymmetrical balance is ideal.

• Continuity is all about images forming patterns, such as waves in the sea, or musical beats involving both repetition and progression. Shelves of books and panels of curtains provide obvious and often pleasing rhythms (And, yes, designing rooms resembles making music).

Continuity comes easy when you arrange dining chairs or a series of small rugs. You might enjoy experimenting with patterns made by candles, pots, linens or, best of all, framed artworks.

• Focus, as in the movies, is the central attraction. Almost all fine works of art have at least one focal point that’s easy to identify. Similarly, your rooms require a compelling feature that commands attention. Since earliest times, the fireplace has been a focus, drawing families and furniture together for warmth, food and security. Your own central feature may be less commonplace, so you ought to consider dramatic and/or comic attractions. My own favorite rooms offer an element of surprise: a big butterfly kite flying in the eaves of my Brazilian kitchen, and a mannequin dressed as a policeman guarding the back door.

Tips for arranging rooms
Once you understand these aesthetic principles, it’s much easier to start arranging your furnishings artfully. Here are some practical tips to guide you along the way:

• Think “function.” Eating, drinking, sleeping, working, playing, washing… Places are literally shaped by all these vital activities. Take a close look at what you actually do. Have you enough truly comfortable seating? Adequate lighting? Side tables for martinis and peanuts? Be candid about what you really want, and then get it.
• Open up your space. Be sure your furnishings and artworks all allow enough room to breathe. Keep areas around objects walls and doors stairways reasonably open. You need traffic lanes! Keep in mind that space isn’t just emptiness: It’s a basic design element. On the other hand, don’t go mad with minimalism. Excessive nothingness is like starvation: highly undesirable.

• Pay attention to relative dimensions. All-important pieces need a good relationship. Observe how major furnishings relate to interior architecture. If, for instance, you have a Victorian house with high ceilings and windows, conventional wisdom suggests that you introduce a high-backed sofa, a tall armoire or other lofty pieces. (On the other hand, you can create a wonderful focus by going purposely out-of-scale: Imagine the drama of one huge tree in a glass-domed entry hall, especially if a tiny bird sings in it).

• Experiment with furnishings in large spaces. Have you tried floating your sofa, out in the open, away from the walls? First float, then create groups of major pieces– putting them together facilitates communication, the natural way. Notice how guests often pull chairs together naturally, so that they can hear and see each other easily. (On the other hand, should you really want the formal, grand Louis XIV look, line your chairs and tables up against the walls like soldiers). In a very large room, you probably will need two or three different furniture groupings, perhaps with a round table or sculpture between them.

• Reduce scale of furniture in smaller spaces. Using downsized pieces is the usual way professionals design small rooms. It works. But if you prefer standard-sized furniture, select just a few special pieces— perhaps a love seat instead of sofa. If you have plenty of overall space, you might enjoy using a small room for a very special purpose. For instance, you could make an intimate space by tenting the walls and adding chaise lounge, along with a charming table for two.

• Final advice: Don’t forget who you are. Many otherwise intelligent people forget themselves and their own needs when it comes to home décor. Probably they’ve been programmed by phony imagery (my clients and students often hand me pictures of self-important rooms they want to copy). Liberate yourself from status-conscious “museum perfect” salons, frighteningly gadget-driven kitchens and those hot red bedrooms where no one can sleep when sober. Instead try to follow your own guidelines, or find a professional designer or artist who’s capable of subordinating his or her ego and helping you edit and refine your own self-expressions. There are some of us out there, you know. ◆

Pre-fab dwellings at MoMA in New York

Pre-fab housing:
Confessions of a convert

CAROLINE DUNLOP MILLETT    
(Originally published in the Broad Street Review, October 7, 2008)

Thanks to MOMA’s exhibition on “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling,” I’ve done a complete U-turn on the subject of prefab housing.

    Where I grew up, factory-made homes meant trailer trash or cookie-cutter suburban sprawl. Now I see an amazing yellow-bodied, pink-legged “Zip Up Enclosure” (by architects Richard and Su Rogers)— and I start imagining how I can make it a country retreat.
   
    Regrettably, the Rogers prefab hasn’t yet but built: It’s actually a proposal feature in the New York Museum of Modern Art’s historical survey on the sixth floor. Outdoors on an empty lot next door, you can see and explore five real-life factory-made homes, all constructed in a matter of days, just for “Home Delivery.” Each of these dwellings is a different kind of wonder, and all feature truly innovative, state-of-the-art technology. 

    Most notable is the “Cellophane House” designed by Philadelphia’s own KieranTimberlake Associates.  Visually, this handsome four-story modernist structure belongs very much in the tradition of Phillip Johnson’s “Glass House”; yet “Cellophane House” is technologically more sophisticated, and economically it’s much, much more feasible for middle-income Americans.  Unlike Johnson’s ‘Glass House,”  “Cellophane House” can be built site-specific, and it’s designed to meet individual need through what the architects call “mass customization.” (For more information, visit  www.momahomedelivery.org.)

    For me, it was worth a day trip to New York just to see this amazing house and to participate in a genuine “urban happening.”  The crowd all around me was intensely engaged in the show: praising and damning, imagining sleeping or eating in the strange little rooms, wondering if they had the “discipline” to live in such challenging new environments.

    Some found these houses utterly impractical; others pronounced them a good alternative to crowded-over living. Almost everyone I heard criticized the kitchens and bathrooms as inadequate, except in the “Cellophane House,” which is certainly the biggest and most livable of the five structures exhibited.

    In terms of its interior design, the KieranTimberlake house poses a number of challenges, which were not addressed in the empty model. Of course I couldn’t resist decorating all the rooms in my mind. Here’s what I’d do:
   
    Integration of the exterior and interior environments: Since “Cellophane House” is basically transparent and much balconied, in an ideal world I’d begin by landscaping the immediate grounds. A “landscaped” garden modeled after Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West would suit “Cellophane House” very well (as portrayed in Met Home’s October 2006 issue).  The Granite structures and gravel paths are interspersed with Japanese red maple and blue green conifers to great effect.

    Color scheme: Instead of conforming with the usual black/white or beige/gray schemes found in most modernist interiors, I would introduce more comforting colors drawn from the immediate exterior: nature’s soft reds, terracottas and golden yellows. “Cellophane House” is intrinsically cold: hence I would concentrate on warm, friendly hues.
   
    Functional arrangement: Given the modest size of the rooms and the strong rectilinearity of the interiors, I would choose medium- and small-scaled upholstered furnishings with similar shapes. And since storage is a huge problem, I’d introduce a number of multipurpose pieces.

    For example, I’d choose a bed with drawers underneath and float it in the middle of the bedroom, using an armoire’s back as its headboard. In the living room, I’d choose a coffee table that could do double duty as a dining table, and end tables with storage components.
   
    Artworks, books and accessories: For those of us with extensive collections, living in a factory-built house would be a genuine challenge. I myself would oust the cars from the first-floor garage and turn it into a library/office with extensive bookshelves on actual walls. In the living room and bedrooms, artworks could be hung from aluminum ceiling supports and could literally float around the outskirts of these rooms. I would keep accessories to a minimum but include useful pieces that look like freestanding sculpture, such as “Blow Up Umbrella Stand” by Fratelli Campana for Alessi, or “Opus Shelving” from Design Within Reach.
   
    These are just a few thoughts about how to personalize a factory-built space. That extra effort is definitely worthwhile, since these homes provide us with intelligent solutions to many pressing environmental issues; population growth, sustainability and escalating cost factors in the building industry. ◆

Home Design: The Ideal Kitchen

Learning from Rembrandt’s Holland:
My ideal modern kitchen (without that bulky island!)

CAROLINE DUNLOP MILLETT
(Originally published in the Broad Street Review, August 16, 2008)

Third in a series of articles about home design.

    Everybody’s in the kitchen these days– eating, drinking, phoning, playing games, entertaining, listening to music, watching TV, working— and sometimes even cooking. Since this multi-functional space has become the social center of the American home, professional builders and designers have created new (and very expensive) “model kitchens” which propose to meet all homeowners’ design goals.

    Here’s one of today’s most celebrated kitchen concepts: the generic version, which looks like a trade-show display. In Philadelphia’s Lifestyles magazine (March/April 2008), Sean O’Halloran’s article “Where Dreams Come True” declares that “shaping your ideal kitchen is about opening your mind and forging a very specific vision.” To illustrate this point, he offers a surprisingly standardized model, where homeowners must sit in a straight line on stiff stools facing a solid wall of stainless steel and dark cabinetry (punched up with all white accessories. Granted, this kitchen meets certain functional requirements. But how can it possibly satisfy a homeowner’s yearning for beauty, relaxation and personal identity?

    Another, more minimalist model is called the “Kitchens of Earthly Delights” in Metropolitan Home (May 2008).  Despite her braggadocio about sculptural effects and “cabinetry with sex appeal,” Katherine E. Nelson’s sterile kitchens all look like fancy factories for living. Shades of Corbusier! No food nor drink nor comfort nor individuality here! Just more clever talk about the realm of senses, and no action.

The goal is beauty with personality

    But enough negative examples. Allow me to present my own “ideal kitchen”— one that aims to achieve the two basic homemaking goals: beauty and personality. My concept has evolved along with my interest in renovating The Cloisters, one of Philadelphia’s fine old structures, into an affordable apartment building with indoor-outdoor kitchens available to all units. 

    Consider the proposed floor plan for my personal kitchen space, 21’ x 34’.  These dimensions are drawn from the numbers system of the 12th-Century architect Fibonacci (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34…), also known as the “golden mean” found in nature. The idea is to give special attention to aesthetic ideals which have stood the test of time.

    The overall style for my ideal kitchen is what you might call “contemporary eclectic,” with a strong dose of my favorite period style: 17th-Century Dutch. As Witold Rybczynski explained so brilliantly in Home, (page 5), intimacy and privacy appeared in the Netherlands during its “golden age” (1609-1660s), and here the “modern idea of family home first entered Dutch consciousness.” It was also here that personal style evolved: Environments began to display the character of their owners. Rembrandt, de Witte, and Vermeer– all great artists during this epoch– celebrated the beauty of ordinary household objects. These included cupboards full of household treasures, Turkish carpets, stone fireplaces, raftered ceilings, heavy swagged curtains, along with fruits and flowers in season. According to Paul Zumthor, in Daily Life in Rembrandt’s Holland (page 41), the 17th-Century Dutch kitchen was “promoted to a position of fantastic dignity and became something between a temple and a museum.”

    Please note the absence of so-called kitchen “essentials”: The bulky island, obstructive bar with attendant stools, excessive over-counter cabinetry, and the protruding refrigerator— all gone! Think of the money to be saved!

Special features

    Ultimately these savings can be put to better use in the pantry behind a jib (concealed) door.  Besides providing plenty of storage space, the pantry hides the refrigerator’s bulk, and also serves as a wine cellar, potting shed, linen closet, and backup kitchen for parties. Now there’s space for some other special features:

    •  Greenhouse: Hopefully the indoor kitchen will house herbs and flowers hanging from rafters above the gallery counters.  Outside the gallery window, more flowers will cheer up the dishwasher. Along the 20-foot art wall, a ten-foot tree may accommodate a parrot in antique cage. Perennial grasses and vines cluster and trail along the outer edge surrounding the entire exterior balcony (just as they did long ago in my apartment in São Paulo). In time, these plantings will mass together with those of other neighboring balconies, to create a vertical garden wonderland.
  
    •  Cook’s kitchen: As in many contemporary European kitchens, the cook can reach out to open shelves and grab utensils, herbs, wine, olive oil, pots and pans, and much more in a nanosecond. Altogether, the counters total 34 running feet, including gallery, pantry and cupboard.  And oh yes, the cupboard looks like a 17th-Century Dutch original, but it’s really a bar and coffee center. Budget permitting, up-to-the minute Gaggenau appliances (including a remarkable heathifying steamer) will be featured throughout the kitchen.

    •  Double fireplace: Two hearths are better than one. Both indoor and outdoor stone fireplaces are very special centers of attention. For thousands of years people have sat around fires, to see the magic flames, to cook, to warm ourselves, to find a sense of security in a dark world. Why ever should we do without the real thing in the 21st Century?
   
    •  Integrated artworks: The art wall (rustic brick at best) includes a rod for hanging pictures and attached ladder, which makes displaying paintings easy.  From my existing collection I’ll start with Chuck Connelly’s oil paintings of landscapes and flowers. Illuminating the dining table and long kitchen counter are Harry Anderson’s light sculptures.  Also from my collection, antique copper, brass and silver plates and pots are scattered about on cupboard and gallery shelves.

Home Design: The Personal Style

Knock, knock, anybody home?
(and other tough questions about  the ‘artist’ within you)
CAROLINE DUNLOP MILLETT
(Originally published in the Broad Street Review, April 29, 2008)

Second of a series of articles on home design.

    “Own your own soul in your bedroom.”
     “Find your true spirit in a tree house.”
    “Realize the real you in a dream kitchen.”

    These false promises and many more can be found in countless shelter magazines. Or you can turn on a TV home show and get advice from the pretty blonde who’ll tell you how to develop a custom personal concept in ten minutes flat.

    If I sound too harsh in my criticism of mass media sales pitches, consider this Siematic kitchen ad. Here you’re told to make your kitchen “the same way that idiosyncratic architects back then [in the late 19th Century] took the freedom to combine elements from different historic eras.” Today, the ad insists, “you too can break the conventional rules of style and create something new: your own personal composition, a reflection of your personality.”

    Maybe you can find evidence of originality and character in this illustration. I can’t. Besides, the much-touted “composition of styles from different periods” is nonexistent, with the possible exception of a crystal chandelier, which will get hideously greasy if anyone actually cooks anything in this kitchen.

    What I do see is a contemporary cliché, a sophisticated up-to-the-minute fashion statement likely to go out of style relatively soon. This glamorous kitchen is a bad buy for anyone wishing to make a permanent investment in personal style.

    Now take a look at an ad for Wood-Mode’s refined custom cabinetry, which you are also told will “reflect your own personal style,” even though the room in the picture is filled with standardized Italian Renaissance detailing. Unless you happen to be a sincere Italophile, this “personal” statement makes no sense at all. You can’t just buy an Old World concept package and expect it to deliver an environment chock full of your personality (or anyone else’s). Copies of copies of period styles tend to lack the quality and vitality of the original creation.

Beware instant miracles

    Self-knowledge lies at the heart of all successful projects— in home design or any other endeavor. So I urge would-be home designers to begin by exploring your preferences and your lifestyle. Self-discovery isn’t always easy or pleasant. But if I haven’t frightened you off yet, bear with me. You may actually enjoy the process.
   
    (Movie stars claim they enjoy this process so much that they’ve entered the design business themselves. Julianne Moore is featured in Domino’s May 2008 issue in her “best role yet: decorator!”; and Jane Seymour has published Making Yourself at Home (Bullfinch, 2007), in which she tells you how to “discover the artist within you.” Seymour is also launching her own concept packages, including “St. Catherine’s Court,” so that you too can have the “dramatic luxury of her regal 14th-Century English manor home.” That “artist within you” sounds very much like a replica of Jane Seymour.)

Demystifying style jargon

    The first step to finding the elusive “real you” is to learn about specific period, contemporary, and vernacular styles. Throughout history human structures and values have determined how ideas are expressed aesthetically. So when people’s perspectives change over time, their contemporary mode of expression becomes a period style. For example, when rich monasteries ruled Europe and dominated almost all building and decoration, the Romanesque period emerged. Then with the rise of cities, the merchant class and the money culture evolved in Gothic style.

    Peruse this chronology link and you’ll see that rich folk were the style dictators for 5,000 years! (Fashion was rarely a preoccupation of the starving masses). Not until the industrial and social revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th Centuries did the middle and working classes get the opportunity to emulate their peers, and democratic multi-class styles finally emerged.

    Since contemporary style draws its inspiration from past styles and present fashions alike, it’s understandably dubbed Eclectic. Happily, this mix-and-match approach is singularly suitable to the idea of personal style, the most challenging goal of interior design in our times. (Formerly, most people were satisfied if their homes were simply beautiful, functional and comfortable.)

But suppose you’re not an artist?

    So how do you go about discovering your own charisma? And how can you develop the necessary aesthetic judgment to apply your style to your personal environment?

    Unfortunately, there’s no good substitute for artistic talent. Your own talent can be nurtured by hard work and experience, but some people just aren’t artists. If that’s your case, I urge you to (1) continue studying and experimenting until you’re convinced of your competence; or (2) work interactively with an experienced design partner, at least on a part-time basis; or (3) hire an enlightened professional to execute a design plan based on your genuine sense of self.

Go on a treasure hunt

    Even if you opt for professional guidance, you need to let your consultant know who you are at home. One road to self-discovery is the treasure hunt: Find your most valued possessions, and pay attention to the story they tell. A chic lady friend of mine identified her grandmother’s slipper chair as her most favorite possession, and she used it as the centerpiece of a 19th-Century neo-boudoir. (During the design process, she began to imagine herself as a character in a Balzac novel, and her husband became similarly inspired.)

    Letting your architecture speak for itself is another sound approach, especially if your home already has elements of high drama, like gorgeous ceilings, ancient alcoves or free-floating stairways. One of my students insisted that a carved wooden door in his historic house “awakened his unconscious memory” ⎯ so he opened the door to his garden, and built a walled room outside for meditation. Here he found the peace he badly needed.

Smell that cedar chest

    Those interested in cooking or lovemaking or music might prefer to enter the realm of physical senses. Should this be you, check out your home with your eyes, ears, nose, mouth and hands. That’s right— enter each room in your home and feel the suede sofa, smell the cedar chest, and sit down and just listen, and breathe until you can realize the mood of the place. With luck, you’ll connect with each room’s unique ambience, e.g., warm and welcoming, or stoic and invigorating, or morbid and frightening. You may not like what you find out. But on the other hand, you’ll have a good idea of what possessions to keep and what to reject. Good editing is essential to fine design.

    One last option, based strictly on the pleasure principal: Concentrate on your favorite activity. Don’t be shy! Just take time to visualize yourself engaged in doing what you like best (even if it’s drinking beer or embroidering). Then envision a special space devoted to this practice. Imagine you have all the time and talent and money you need in order to design walls, floors, furnishings, light and color. These imaginings alone will generate new and wondrous thoughts.

    Of course there are a myriad of ways to discover your stylistic preferences. As long as you don’t get bogged down by other people’s design ideas, and you concentrate on what excites and delights you, your success is guaranteed.

The Home As Art

Free at last (of Ralph Lauren and Oprah):
A new manifesto for affluent homes
CAROLINE DUNLOP MILLETT
 (Originally published in the Broad Street Review, March 8, 2008)


First of a series of articles about home design.

    in 1840 Edgar Allan Poe pronounced the decorating of American homes “preposterous.” Unlike our English forebears, Poe observed in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, we Americans had “no aristocracy of blood … and have therefore fashioned an aristocracy of dollars… and have brought to merge in simple show our notion of taste itself.”

    Poe concluded that Americans confounded the two separate ideas of grandiosity and beauty, and he proposed to “obviate vulgar pretensions” and “blind subservience to the caprices of fashion” by showing his readers how to design their personal environments the same way artists made their art.

    Poe remains America’s most farsighted critic in the field of residential design. The aristocracy of dollars still rules the home front today. Just look at the McMansions and movie star retreats featured in Architectural Digest and it’s clear that grandiosity and vulgarity still prevail.

    To be sure, in the last two centuries Americans have built the greatest number of efficient, comfortable and accessible dwellings the world has ever seen, spending countless billions on home renovation and decoration. If the magazine stands and cable TV shows are any indication, Americans feel a nationwide passion for interior design.

    Why, then, is the quality of creative expression a matter of such minor importance in most people’s homes? Why do even people of wealth and taste seem to live in homes that are just like those of every other person of wealth and taste?

The big four culprits

    I blame four big roadblocks to real design creativity in American homes:

    Mass production. Unlike furnishings and accessories of the past, the vast majority of American home products are machine-made in enormous quantity. Most household goods are now conventionalized and packaged. Room functions are predetermined. Floor plans are standardized. Even color schemes are systemized. These goods and services are then mass-marketed— often with greater creative inspiration than went into the products themselves.

    Design dictators. Despite the vigorous lip service that interior designers give to individual lifestyles, many of them decorate their clients’ homes down to the toilet paper. Others create product lines. Ralph Lauren is the most shining example. With undeniable skill, he orchestrates complete home concepts like “Newport Mansion,” “Western Ranch” and “Jamaican Resort.” Designers’ concept packages include furnishings, accessories, linens, clothes, perfumes and other thematically integrated “essentials.”

    The problem is not a lack of quality; it’s a lack of self-expression. Ralph’s Lauren’s vision— whichever one— isn’t necessarily yours.

    Grand illusions. At the other extreme lies the disastrous obsession with “doing it yourself.” Without training or technical expertise— let alone professional advice—many well-intentioned Americans fashion hideous homes simply because Martha Stewart told them how to do-it-themselves.

    For an excellent example of haste making waste, check the Spring 2008 issue of Oprah Winfrey’s O at Home magazine, which urges readers to create an “Instant art collection.” How? “Instead of traveling to flea markets for vintage art, consider hanging this… wallpaper.” For $1,200 you can buy a pseudo collection, which is really four sheets of paper featuring copies of bad art.

    What is the alternative? In her new book, Inspirations from France and Italy, Betty Lou Phillips makes what to most Americans will seem like an earth-shaking suggestion: Domestic décor should evolve over time. Phillips urges Americans to learn from the French, who see “decorating their homes as an aesthetic undertaking en route to self-fulfillment.” Hmm. Self-fulfillment without hiring a therapist. Fancy that!

    Lack of confidence. Even as design dictators urge us to scrap our favorite possessions for the sake of maintaining stylistic integrity, we’re inundated with intimidating notions in newspapers, TV, catalogues, malls, design centers, eBay. The net result is befuddlement and insecurity, two commodities deadly to inspiration and creativity.

When the bourgeois meet the Bohemians

     But enough negativity. Here’s the good news: I believe a new, educated class has surfaced in American culture— an upper class whose value structure has already made significant improvements in the realm of home design. As David Brooks so brilliantly explained in Bobos in Paradise (2000), the cultural war between the artsy, spiritual bohemians (like Edgar Allan Poe) and the rich, rational bourgeois is finally drawing to an end. The two classes have co-opted each other to celebrate both enlightened creativity and the best quality of life that money can buy. Typical Bobos— that is, bourgeois Bohemians—  disdain excessive opulence while applauding all that’s unique, comfortable, earthy, handmade, organic and warm. They have money, taste and the confidence to pursue their individual visions.

    As an example, Brooks cites the transformation of Wayne, an old Main Line suburb and upper-bourgeois WASP stronghold that now boasts a variety of coffee houses, bookstores and restaurants, all of which serve as gathering places for artists, intellectuals and thoughtful people of all kinds. If Brooks is right, this kind of social transformation is a blessing for those who want to be artists in their own homes and gain the respect of others at the same time.

A poker room on a Caribbean cliff

    Over the last two decades I’ve observed the changing attitudes of both my interior design clients and my students at Penn. I rarely get requests for conventional copies of period rooms, or what Poe called grandiose apartments. Instead, clients and students alike are asking for help in editing and refining their own personal styles. Designing “green” is also in demand; so are downscaled houses with higher quality interior architecture.

    Some of my clients want spaces planned around their favorite activities. I’m thinking, for example, of an Anguillian “rock room” carved out of a cliff above the Caribbean— a hideaway that had served as a hurricane shelter until I transformed it into a poker room, centered by an octagonal table and circled by a collection of Robert Indiana “number” lithographs. Another sports-happy family wanted a full-scale spa within their Barclay Hotel condo. My design partner and I gave them an elevated marble bath, extensive exercise equipment, a ballet bar and mirrored walls beneath a series of dancing nudes by Philadelphia artist Ursula Sternberg. Currently I’m creating a three-dimensional artistic composition using a New Jersey client’s treasures– antique textiles, gilded candlesticks and colorful oddments collected on her travels.

    All these projects were designed to fulfill several goals— comfort, convenience, and beauty— simultaneously. Not coincidentally, these are the same qualities set forth by the Roman architect and theoretician Vitruvius in his Ten Books on Architecture in the First Century B.C. Vitruvius believed in perfecting the beauty of buildings as an imitation of nature, and to that end he integrated landscape architecture and artistry in his own projects. We’ve had his guidelines for 2,000 years; why not follow them? For the affluent, at least, money isn’t the primary stumbling block; courage and imagination are.